FinTech news in bonfire ventures category

When you include a wider variety of people in investing, it can impact the entire system from the cap table to the boardroom to founders, executive teams, and workforces, and it can lead to more diverse wealth creation over time because some percentage of the startup investments pay out. The couple has been involved in investing on their own, including investments in SpaceX and Robinhood, but they want to create a network to bring in people they know, who have not been asked to be involved in startup investments. Shruti Challa and her husband, Patrick Ekeruo, launched Community Growth Capital this year to give people like this access to later-stage deals with the goal of democratizing growth-stage cap tables. General partner Lorenzo Thione said that the group of people involved in venture investing in the past has been very narrow, and he sees that as a missed opportunity by the venture community.

Mark Mullen, co-founder of Bonfire Ventures, the firm that invested in Brightflow’s seed stage, said the company’s initial customers were e-commerce, which made it easier to understand the pain points. However, Brightflow founder and CEO Robbie Bhathal told journalist that the company differentiates itself by focusing on the automation of financial services and disseminating that information in a way that a business owner can understand. The San Francisco–based company cash flow calculator grabs financial data from platforms like Shopify, Amazon, QuickBooks, Facebook and Google Ads, and then provides a real-time look at cash flow. Brightflow AI is injecting technology into this problem with its forecast and analysis tools so that small businesses can assess their cash flow and make data-driven decisions in real time.

Bonfire Ventures, a Los Angeles venture capital firm, invests in seed-stage business-to-business software companies and aims to change the odds so that more than the average 33% of companies in this sector make it to Series A.